Kalsubai

Kalsubai
Region - Igatpuri
Base Village : Bari
Height : 5400 ft (above MSL)

I went to Kalsubai the highest point in Maharashtra on 9th December 2007. I had gone with the trek-di group. We were a group of 40 people and started from Pune at 11pm on 8th December 07. The route is via Pune -> Nashik Phata -> Bhosari -> Moshi -> Chakan -> Rajgurunagar -> Khed ->Manchar ->Narayangaon -> Alephata -> Sangamner -> Rajur -> Akole -> Bari

At around 2.ooam we reached the Sangamner turn for Rajur. Here we had hot tea and refreshed ourselves. Manali (a leader from trek-di) was trying to pull out sugarcanes from a sugarcane laden truck and it was a truly hilarious sight to see that..soon everyone started pulling the sugarcanes :)

We started again in 15 minutes towards our destination. The roads were good and we made good time. The road is via ghats and hence has to be negotiated carefully. In between there is a turn for the Bhandardara dam but we continued straight ahead and reached the outskirts of Bari around 4.45am. It was damn cold outside and we found a school to sleep in -- some people slept in the bus. We had to get up at 6am -- however I couldn't sleep due to some over enthusiastic guys from the group who had got onto the roof of the bus to sleep and we rocking the whole bus :-)

We got up at 6am and tea was being prepared. We could see the peak of Kalsubai towering and it was an awesome sight.Breakfast was bread , butter / jam and we had our share along with piping hot tea which was a relief and we got fresh. We started again from that place to the village where we had Kunal, Amit and Chaitanya already present (they had come on bike becoz there was no place in the bus). We got down with our sacks and lunch (paratha packets) were distributed to everyone for eating once we reached the top. We had a quick round of introductions and started on our trek.

At the first halt there is a small temple where people stopped for a breather. The view was starting to get awesome from here. We climbed on till the first ladder (over the rock patch). The ladder was rusty and looked like would fall any moment but we made through it up and climbed. Here there were many rock patches to be climbed but they were easy. We used to climb up and wait for others to come and then would start again.

One by one we climbed the 3 ladders over the rock patches and reached the base plateau of the mountain but we still had a lot to go to reach the highest point. The route was scree laden and was slipping but we got through it and reach a point where there is a well.Here everyone refreshed themselves and we could see the kalsubai peak getting nearer and could see the last rock formation which is the highest point - we reached the peak by climbing a last ladder.

It took us around 3 hours from base to climb till here. The views from the top are amazing - we can see the fort of Ratangad far away towards the south side - on the west side we can see the forts of Alang , Madan and Kulang and other mountains.

There is no other mountain near Kalsubai hence we can see everything clearly from top. On the top there is a small temple of Kalsubai mata. After enjoying the views we sat down for lunch and took our packed paranthas out and had a great lunch with everyone sitting round and enjoying parathas , dahi , pickles and other stuff.

After lunch we laid down in the cool shade of the temple and had a small siesta :). Sometime later we had our photo sessions with the group and then started preparing for our climb down. The climb down was equally interesting and adventurous. Due to the loose mud , scree and rocks we had to climb down with care. We reached the base village in about 2 hours and waited for all others to come.

We had bhel for the evening snacks and started by bus back home. We reached Nashik phata at around 11pm in the night where I alighted and went home.

A great trek thus ended.